This post was originally published on April 1, 2013. Between 1909 and 1948, the Grand Palais near the Champs-Elysées in Paris featured remarkable decorative interiors which housed automotive, aeronautical and many other types of trade shows. For the buildings and other structures of the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, decorative lighting helped create a unity...
Author: Evelyn Meynard Published in 1971, Ylem is a manifesto that contains a collection of designs and texts by the German industrial designer Luigi Colani, held in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Library .
This 1937 Czech tubular steel trade catalog Kovový nábytek //Vichr a Spol is a recent addition to the Cooper Hewitt Library’s extensive collection of furniture trade literature. The library collects these invaluable primary resource materials from all periods, styles, designs and countries. This is a photogravure catalog issued by Vichr, one of the major Czech...
I have always loved looking at old advertisements in magazines; many of the people that come and use the Cooper Hewitt Library come for that specific reason. Advertisements are designed to establish a connection between the person seeing it, and the product or idea the ad is selling. Typefaces, colors, styles of portraying an object-...
“There is much more to shopping in the French capital than merely walking in in American fashion and making a purchase. Shopping in Paris is an art and must be approached with a certain finesse.”
![Image features: Illustration. Cover of The home decorator and color guide by Rockwell Kent. Published by [S.l.] : Sherwin-Williams, 1939. Smithsonian Libraries. Please scroll down to see the blog post about this object.](https://www.cooperhewitt.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NK2115.5.C6-K46-1939r.jpg)
Rockwell Kent is famous as an early American modernist painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer, sailor and adventurer. Like many artists he did commercial and decorative work in order to earn money and pay the bills. The Cooper Hewitt Library has some examples of this commercial work – designing dinnerware, murals, bookplates, and this interior design and...
The Cooper Hewitt Design Library recently acquired another Lothar Meggandorfer (1847-1925) movable book for its pop-up and movable collection. He is known for his children’s book illustrations, but is best known as a movable book designer.
Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877), a well-known British architect and art historian, championed the role of the designer in the manufacturing process.
The Schmitz-Horning Co. wall decoration catalogue from 1913-1914 is one of the Cooper Hewitt Design Library’s many trade catalogues. Schmitz-Horning Co. opened in 1905 as a wallpaper and mural manufacturing firm in Cleveland, Ohio.
